


Eggs Benedict

by polysyndeta



Series: Triumvirate [3]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 22:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3505661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polysyndeta/pseuds/polysyndeta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin was pleased - but not at all surprised - when Harry arranged to see Kingsman’s UK-based psychiatrist only three days after reappearing at Savile Row.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eggs Benedict

**Author's Note:**

> So this was going to be a lead-in to something sexier but then I realised it wasn't going to be compatible with anything I want to write in the near future, so. Enjoy some quiet moments between the smutty prompt fills?

Merlin was pleased - but not at all surprised - when Harry arranged to see Kingsman’s UK-based psychiatrist only three days after reappearing at Savile Row. Without being needed to be ordered, coerced or even hinted to.

They didn’t talk about it; they didn’t need to. A Kingsman isn’t some dismal stereotype who drowns his trauma in casual sex and cheap whiskey: he is not a man capable of so thoroughly lying to himself that he'll throw himself into the field while ravaged by post-traumatic stress. No more than Harry would let his physical wounds fester with infection, would he let the marks on his psyche go untreated.  To be so negligent would put not only his own life at risk, but his comrades' and the integrity of the whole of Kingsman.

Months after the fact, he’s still making time for at least two hours per week with his doctor, most often at a distance. He is...improving. As with physical injury, some wounds of the mind heal completely, and some never will, at least not to the patient's satisfaction. Others - like Harry's - _seem_ healed, the scars clean and painless, until they are exposed to particular stimuli.

(A particular high-pitched whine from a machine in the lab had him abruptly excusing himself from an equipment demonstration.  Merlin found him in the Gents' ten minutes later, kneeling over a toilet, lips flecked with bile, shaking uncontrollably. After that he arranged immersion therapy - the grim prospect of watching through his own eyes as he partook in mass slaughter. Over and over again. Until he could finally acknowledge that they were his hands and his feet and his training but it was not his mind. It was not _him_.)

Sometimes he wakes in the early hours, crying out, disoriented. Merlin cannot imagine how often this might happen when he is unobserved at home, or alone in any number of foreign hotel rooms and safehouses. When they manage to claim a night together, and the worst happens, Merlin has learnt not to react. Not until Harry curls up on his side and touches his brow to Merlin's shoulder.

Sometimes they talk about it, sometimes they don't. It grows increasingly rare.

On the evening that they fuck Eggsy senseless and collapse into sleep, a warm sex-soft tangle on Merlin's queen-sized bed, the ghosts of South Glade Mission Church give Harry only a few hours' peace. Merlin stirs in the half-darkness to two voices:

"...'arry? Harry, what're you - "

_I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't want to I **didn't want to**_

"Harry, s'just us, you're okay, yeah?" Eggsy sounds frightened - no, not just frightened.   _Disturbed._ "You're havin' a nightmare.  Let me - "  In the glow of streetlights bleeding through the curtains, Merlin sees his hand stretching out to the bedside lamp.

_he made me, please, please, I'm **sorry**_

"Eggsy. No."

_hurts please don't_

"But he's - "

_should never have been there, had no idea, that fucking **hubris** killed all those people I'm so sorry_

"Just let him work through it."

Merlin can feel Eggsy vibrating with nervous energy, like a magnet caught between two poles, refusing at once to disobey one man and ignore the other. It hurts to do nothing. Merlin feels for him.  But when Harry's wounds are open, pressure hurts regardless of whether it's well-meant.

It passes like it always does, in a matter of minutes, the broken sound of his voice levelling into quiet as he ascends to consciousness.   The silence is brittle. Eggsy's breathing is shallow and rapid.

"...I'm sorry," Harry says rigidly, minutes later, and Merlin knows he isn't being spoken to.  "You shouldn't have seen that."

" _Prick_ ," is Eggsy's considered response, and he drags Harry into his arms.  Pushes his face against Harry's throat. "If I didn't want everythin' I'd've fucked off back home once we was done, wou'n't I?"

Merlin rolls onto his side, broad chest placed against Harry's back, and kisses the scar.  Not the one covered by his hair, skimming his temple: the one on his shoulder, the knife wound left by the civilian he turned on and put down like an animal.

Harry falls asleep that way, safe in the cocoon of his lovers' bodies, and in the morning he makes eggs Benedict and they don't talk about it.


End file.
